Sustainable Societies

Climate

Direct evidence from temperature records indicate a global-scale warming of the atmosphere near the Earth's surface. The impacts of such a process include: sea levels rising, changes in rain patterns and the distributions of airborne diseases. Other atmospheric threats include ozone depletion, acid rain, and urban air pollution. The issue divides into three sections:

A. Global Atmospheric Trends -- These trends include climate change and rising sea levels (which place low-lying countries at risk for severe flooding, cholera, and other water-borne diseases), the increase in global-scale greenhouse gas concentrations, and ozone depletion (allowing damaging UV light to penetrate the atmosphere and cause diseases such as skin cancer).

B. Regional Air Pollution -- Found principally in eastern North America and Europe and increasingly in East Asia, its main consequence is acid rain (causing fish disappearance and extensive forest damage). Three major human causes of regional air pollution are industrialization, large populations, and automobile emissions.

C. Urban Air Pollution -- As more people live in urban environments, air pollution is quickly becoming an alarming health and environmental problem. The impact of urban pollution is variable depending upon the area's topography, climate, and human activity (particularly in transportation, energy and industrial sectors) and has devastating effects on human health in susceptible cities.